As the interest on beauty treatment is increased, there is also a rising interest on treating hair loss.
Hairs do not have a physiologic function that is directly important for life, but have the functions, including the mitigation of external shock, an anti-ultraviolet function, the human body protection from external stimulus, and the absorption of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, and zinc, which are unnecessary for the human body to eliminate them from the body. The cycle of hairs is divided into the growing period (anagen) that grows hairs, the degeneration period (catagen) that slows the metabolic process down while stopping the growth and reducing a hair bulb, and the suspension period for (telogen) that reduces a hair follicle and rides a hair root up to fall hairs out. The hairs have the hair cycle, in which because new hairs are generated on the same spots, the old hairs have fallen and then the growing period has come, and thus, the growth and the loss of the hairs are repeated in one's lifetime. The hair loss is the state where the hairs are not present on the normal spots that should have the hairs. The causes thereof are as follows: a decline in the function of trichocyst due to the participation of male hormone, a decline in the scalp physiological function, the focal hemodynamic dysfunction due to the scalp tension, innutrition, stress, the side effect by drugs, a genetic factor, chemicals, and diseases such as leukemia, tuberculosis, and malignant lymphoma. In addition to the above functions, the treatment of hair loss is very important from the viewpoint of the quality of life, since when the hair loss is severe, there may be some problems in the social life and the psychological shrinking, and thus, it can seriously affect the social life.
As a hair loss-treating method that is currently used the most, a follicular unit hair transplantation for transplanting one's own hairs, and a medicine treatment using minoxidil and propecia are widely used. In the case of using minoxidil, the nutrition supply to hair cells through vasodioatation is increased and the hair growth is induced by a potassium channel opening effect. In the case of using propecia, the hair growth is induced by the effect on inhibiting the generation of dihydrotestosterone (DHT). However, as for the above two medicines, the effectiveness of hair growth is exhibited at the time of treating, but when the treatment is stopped, the hair loss is again exhibited. Therefore, the medicines have a greater hair loss prevention effect than a hair growth effect. In the case of using propecia, there may be side effects such as sexual dysfunction and the delivery of deformed child.
Recently, a gene therapy has been developed, in which genes related to hair loss are delivered to a hair follicle or the gene expression is blocked. However, the safety and the effectiveness of treatment are unclear and the treatment cost is high, so that the clinical application thereof is not easy. For this reason, a hair loss treating method using a stem cell has the limelight other than the gene treatment.
It has been confirmed that a stem cell can be self-replicated in a un-differentiation state and can be subjected to the multilineage differentiation into the cells of the other tissues, and is present in the many tissues. First of all, a marrow derived stem cell derived from the marrow is known. Since then, it has been known that an adult stem cell is present on anywhere of our body, for example, peripheral blood, placenta, skin, nervous tissue, fat, muscles, and the like, as well as umbilical cord and blood. Meanwhile, the adipose-derived stem cells are a cell derived from a mesenchymal tissue, like a marrow derived stem cell, can be differentiated into various types of cells, such as an adipocyte, a fibroblast, a smooth muscle cell, an endotheliocyte, and a preadipocyte cell, and also can be differentiated into the epithelium, cartilage, nerve, fat, muscles cells, and the like. In addition, an adipose-derived stem cell is easily taken since an adipose tissue that is a material therefor can be additionally mass-extracted during suction lipectomy, and can be easily isolated by enzyme, and after transplanting the adipose-derived stem cell, the reduced disease incidence was reported.
However, currently, as a hair loss treating method using a stem cell, a method for inducing the differentiation into follicular cells by directly injecting the stem cells to the region exhibiting the hair loss or hairless is mainly used. However, such a method has problems in that if the stem cells are not autologous stem cells, the treatment is impossible, the treatment effect is not continuously maintained, and it takes for a long period of time and high costs. In order to improve the above problems, the attempt for treating hair loss, using a culture medium produced at the time of culturing the stem cells, not using the stem cells, is being made.
Meanwhile, the transduction signaling molecules that affect hair growth are an external factor and an internal factor. The external factor may be a growth factor and cytokine. The stem cells secrete a growth factor and a protein active substance, and thus, the culture medium that cultures the stem cells includes the above substances. In order to use the culture medium as a hair growing agent, the culture medium should be produced in bulk. However, in the case of using an adipose-derived stem cell, at the time of culturing the adipose-derived stem cells for a long period of time in vitro, the adipose-derived stem cell exhibits a replicative senescence, in which a cell proliferation ability is gradually decreased by a cellular senescence, and finally, the growth is stopped, and also exhibits reduced differentiation ability. Therefore, in order to overcome the above-described problems, the need of the technique capable of producing a large amount of the culture medium is urgently needed by increasing the lifespan of the cells and the growth speed of the cells while the characteristics of the adipose-derived stem cell are maintained.